Production paint shop design

Abstract

A paint application facility including a paint booth assembly for applying paint to automotive vehicles each defining a longitudinal axis includes a carrier adapted to serially move a plurality of automotive vehicles through the booth assembly in a direction generally perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] Painting automobile bodies has progressed to require a significant amount of advanced technology housed in painting facilities costing of hundreds of millions of dollars. These paint facilities receive unfinished “body in white” vehicle bodies from a body shop for paint processing and transfer painted and sealed bodies to final assembly facilities where the vehicle is completely assembled. A typical paint facility requires up to a third or more of an assembly plant floor space, which is exceedingly costly adding to the cost of painting a vehicle body in terms of both facility construction and energy requirements for maintaining the paint facility. [0002] Various attempts have been made to adjust the processing orientation of vehicle bodies through paint shops. However, the primary focus of these concepts are directed toward pretreatment and electro deposition primer tanks. One such concept is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,419,983, Method of Introducing ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007] As stated above, prior art paint application facilities process automotive vehicle bodies moving upon a conveyor in a direction generally parallel to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle bodies. This is best represented in FIG. 1 where a top portion of the schematics shows a conventional direction of movement of various vehicle bodies 12 in the direction of the vehicle bodies 12 longitudinal axis. As is known to those of skill in the art, a specific distance, generally known to prevent overspray from a first vehicle body 12 to a second vehicle body 12 is required due to the necessity of painting adjacent vehicle bodies 12 with different colors. The spacing is generally about eight feet and is represented by a gap 13 in FIG. 1. The speed of a conveyor that transfers vehicle bodies 12 through a paint application booth is restricted by the ability to atomize and apply a quality paint coating to the vehicle. The faster a conveyor moves, the higher the paint flow rate through paint application equipment must be. As the paint flow rate increases, the paint finish quality on the vehicle is known to decrease. Therefore, to increase the number of vehicle bodies being processed through a paint application facility, a paint application booth is typically made longer and additional paint application stations are required. Furthermore, present application technology prevents reducing the gap 13 disposed between adjacent vehicle bodies 12 to increase the rate of vehicle bodies being processed.

[0009] Two benefits are derived by moving the vehicles at a generally perpendicular direction in a longitudinal axis of the vehicles. First, the conveyor may be slowed down to half its conventional speed while processing the same vehicle rate, which will improve paint finish quality by enabling a reduction in the flow rate of particulate paint in the paint application equipment. Second, through processing vehicles upon a conveyor moving at its original rate enables twice as many vehicles to be processed. Furthermore, some combination of a partial reduction in line speed and a partial reduction in paint flow rate produces an improved paint finish while still increasing a vehicle processing rate through the paint application facility.

[0010] The novel paint application facility design associated with the present invention, uses a new conveyor orientation by moving the conveyors to the outer wall of the various paint application tanks and booths. Alternatively, the conveyors are located outside the booth eliminating all contact of the conveyors with the particulate paint being applied to the vehicle bodies. In either case, an improved airflow quality is derived inside the paint booth which results in improved paint quality and a reduction in paint defects.

Problems solved by technology

Painting automobile bodies has progressed to require a significant amount of advanced technology housed in painting facilities costing of hundreds of millions of dollars.

A typical paint facility requires up to a third or more of an assembly plant floor space, which is exceedingly costly adding to the cost of painting a vehicle body in terms of both facility construction and energy requirements for maintaining the paint facility.

None of the prior art patents have addressed the need to reduce the overall paint application facility size by reducing the size of the various paint booths and ovens required to apply and secure subsequent paint coatings such as, for example, primer surfacer, base coat, and clear coat.

However, much of this overspray is known to adhere to the conveyor, which results in frequent cleaning.

This is known to result in contaminants in the paint application booth causing defects in the paint coating.

Locating process equipment inside the booth is known to cause turbulent airflow.

However, no attempts have been made to reduce the impact of the conveyor upon the airflow through the booth.

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